


take me to your nouns

by quensty



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, adrien and marinette still kick names and take ass, alya is a reporter, and nino is VERY gay for chat noir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 17:31:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16748485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quensty/pseuds/quensty
Summary: Alya is sitting at home and scrolling through the bits and pieces about the buyers she’s been able to pick out when a knock on her window makes her jump three feet out of her skin.She opens it and goes, “When I said we had to stop meeting on abandoned buildings, I didn’t mean this,” trying to look at the Savior of Paris as flatly as she can when she’s wearing a robe and cat slippers.Ladybug grins. “Sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all.





	take me to your nouns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bigeminal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigeminal/gifts).



> i know this will surprise most of u but i do still, in fact, write. 
> 
> this was written for a friend's bday because i um. whats the word. adore them. tbh tho i haven't watched ml since season one came out so is this completely accurate concerning characterization? probably not. but is it funny? also no. it's hilarious. ur welcome. 
> 
> [here's the post on tumblr in case u want to do smthn wild and rb it? idk](http://quensty.tumblr.com/post/178595461436/this-was-written-for-minnutes-birthday-which-was)  
> 
> the title comes from margaret atwood's "tim riggins speaks of waterfalls"

Alya ducks through the doors to the staircase, a quick breeze chasing her inside and smacking her in the face with the lapels of her raincoat. Her hair is probably a mess, so she takes the stairs two at a time with one hand on the rusty railing and the other trying to make herself presentable.

When she makes it to the rooftop, someone is already up there, face turned away from the drizzling rain. It’s like something straight off the cover of a pulp novel: a vague shadow against downtown Paris, if only Alya couldn’t make out all the red.

On complete accident, she lets the door swing shut behind her with a loud smack. Ladybug’s head pivots, probably catching her wince at the same time another gust of wind blows half her hair across her face. Christ.

“Hello,” she says, voice perfectly neutral, because Ladybug is always merciful.

“Evening.” Alya wipes her hands on her knees, flakes of paint sticking to her jeans. “So do you ever do this stuff on the ground?”

“Are we counting this time? No.”

Alya examines a spot on the floor before sitting down. “Funny. Really. I didn’t know you could do that.”

Alya says it lightly, but she thinks both of them are aware that the premise behind it isn’t untrue. Every news network Alya has been able to get her hands on talk about Ladybug like she’s something the world pulled out of a dream, flashing post-battle interviews across the screen that highlight the endless perfection of her face. Maybe it’s because the city gets to watch her flip between buildings on a regular basis, maybe it’s because she’s always shaking hands, always keeps her expression flat and friendly, but sometimes Ladybug being a miracle made real isn’t a hard sell. It wasn’t until the first time Alya met her that she realized how stressful it must be to keep up the act, how it must make her uncomfortable.

Right now, Ladybug smiles at her, and it runs Alya through.

“So I got a list of the buyers you asked about,” Alya says, just so she has an excuse to look away. She digs through the pockets of her messenger bag and pulls out a flash drive. She tosses it and Ladybug does something too quick with her hand, making it vanish. “I managed to trace the money through six different accounts before landing on a fake name and address. Apparently it’s linked directly to the Agrestes.”

“The Agrestes?” Ladybug’s face changes. “As in Adrien Agreste?”

Alya can’t blame her. As she was sitting at her desk, reading the name that popped up, she’d been thrown. What would a celebrity family want with supposedly crucial information on Paris’s heroes? It may be valuable on the streets, but that doesn’t mean a man like Adrien Agreste’s father should want anything to do with it.

Still, there’s something Alya doesn’t like about the hard tension coiling across Ladybug’s shoulders.

“Yes.” She pauses. “Should we be worried about that?”

“Are you planning on writing a piece on this?” Ladybug asks instead.

“I don’t know yet. It would be tough to convince everyone, especially the board, and not all the information is there.” The Agrestes have never been caught in a scandal before, nevermind something like this. Her boss won’t be happy if she goes to him holding a story without any legs, either, but there’s an itch under Alya’s skin to find out how deep this goes, what it might be like to put it out to the public.

There’s nothing Alya hates more than only getting half the story.

“Think hard about it. Publishing it could cause more problems than it’s worth.”

Ladybug turns, probably to leave, but Alya grabs her by the wrist, pulling her back in. “You know something,” she says. When she doesn’t get a reaction, she says, more decisively, “You know something that you aren’t telling me. What is it?”

Alya is a reporter. Her whole life centers around knowing when someone is holding out on her, so she’s not surprised that she guessed right, but that doesn’t mean she’s prepared for Ladybug’s reaction. It’s like Alya can see her flick through her options, what lie she could make ring true, until she decides on the truth.

Ladybug licks her lips, hesitant. “I’m not worried about what’s in the file. Most of it will be speculation. But I have — I have reasons to know that the Agrestes being involved in this doesn’t spell out well.”

“All right,” she says, then realizes her fingers are still wrapped around Ladybug’s wrist. She takes a step back.

“Thank you,” Ladybug tells her, low and warm, “for your help.” She lingers for just a second before she leaps off the roof and disappears with the faintest hiss of a grappling hook.

 

 

***

 

 

This started out as a human interest piece.

The plan was to write about the people who had been rescued after the last villain attack. Just an interview, a few quotes, and some nice pictures. That was it. But the further Alya digged, the more incomplete the whole process felt, like she was just filling pages with words instead of doing something. So she dug deeper, pushed just enough, and now —

And now Nino is staring at the open document on her monitor, then at Alya, then — with raised eyebrows — back at the monitor.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“If you think it’s bad,” Alya snaps, “all you have to do is say so.”

“I don’t think it’s bad! I just —“ Nino flounders, pulling his neckline up to his mouth to muffle a shout. An intern a few feet away trying to force the copy machine to work stares at them. “How long have you been doing this? I didn’t even know you were running an exposé.”

“Technically, I’m not.”

“Christ.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean — Alya.” He jabs his finger against the screen, lowering his voice. “You’re getting quotes from a superhero and investigating the tidiest celebrity in the city.” He stops for a second, considering. “Wait.”

There’s something on his face she immediately dislikes. “No,” she says.

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“You’re not that hard of a read, Nino.”

He shrugs, hands in the air. “I’m just saying if you happen to get a quote from him —“

“I’m not hooking you up with Chat Noir.”

“You’re the worst best friend ever,” he tells her immediately. “If it was me, I would totally wingman you on Ladybug. Instead, I'm just the guy who buys you dinner, and you’re the one who gets to land a superhero.”

“I buy you dinner,” she says. “And I’m not trying to get anything.”

(The memory of something warm under her hand is jarring, how she could feel every bone and muscle. She shouldn’t have reached out that way, kept Ladybug backed up into a corner until she gave in, but the moment Alya put her hands on her felt like vertigo—)

“Right,” he says, unconvinced.

Alya shoves him until he says _Jesus!_ , half-shouting, and nearly falls off his chair. “Don’t you have a deadline to be worrying about?”

Nino relents and points at the unfinished doc, standing up. “You need more solid evidence, especially if you’re not going to reveal your source. And get rid of the adjectives in that last sentence. They’re not doing you any favors.”

 

 

***

 

 

Alya is sitting at home and scrolling through the bits and pieces about the buyers she’s been able to pick out when a knock on her window makes her jump three feet out of her skin.

She opens it and goes, “When I said we had to stop meeting on abandoned buildings, I didn’t mean this,” trying to look at the Savior of Paris as flatly as she can when she’s wearing a robe and cat slippers.

Ladybug grins. “Sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all.

Alya moves away to let her in. “Funny you showed up. I was just looking through the information I gave you, and I was thinking maybe —“

“I came to tell you that I handled it.”

Alya blinks. “You handled it,” she echoes, inane.

“We talked to the Agrestes. We’ll have to wait and see if things work themselves out in the next few days,” she says. She doesn’t look happy about it, though Alya can’t tell if it’s because she doesn’t trust the Agrestes to keep up their end, or if she hates waiting as much as she does.

Either way, the way she’s biting her mouth is — distracting.

“All right,” Alya says and finds that she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. “I — so what happens now?”

“I’m not sure. I suppose if nothing bad comes out of this, then this is where the case ends.” Carefully, one step at a time, she closes the distance between them, puts a warm hand on Alya’s shoulder. “But if you’re willing, seeing you, from time to time, would be nice.”

“Okay,” she says. Her voice feels far away; she feels like the definition of displacement.

Ladybug opens her mouth to say something more, closing a few more inches between them in the process, but it dissolves as soon as she realizes just how close they are to each other. She stops, pink rising in her cheeks, just as her gaze drops down to Alya’s mouth.

It’s obviously the first time she’s thought about it. She looks nervous—

( —and isn’t that dizzying, to think that Alya, of all people, could make someone like Ladybug feel _afraid_ )

—still, slow as anything, her hand goes farther, stops just under Alya’s skull. She shivers, helpless, and who could blame her, when she’s gets to finally, _finally_ put herself in Ladybug’s space, relish in the feeling of having her touch Alya back. Who could stand where she is and reign in their pathetic panting hero-worship, without thinking about what it would be like to throw her common sense out the window.

As if to prove her point, Ladybug hands her the warmest smile she has. Alya closes her eyes and puts her forehead against Ladybug’s.

“This is so unethical,” she says, dismayed.

Ladybug laughs. “We aren’t doing anything.”

“We’re cutting it close,” Alya amends, daring to put her fingers over Ladybug’s cheek, just under the eye mask. “Very close.”

Alya has the picture of it in her brain, of tilting her head, putting her other hand at Ladybug’s collarbone, and leaning in, just as Ladybug blurts, “Is that banana bread?”

“What?” Alya asks, genuinely lost, then tracks Ladybug's gaze to her kitchen counter and goes, “Oh. Yeah, Nino brought it over from some place around the corner.”

Ladybug twinkles. “I see.”

“And I wasn’t going to offer you any,” Alya tells her.

“Me, the one responsible for giving you the story of the century.”

“We haven’t established that I’m writing it,” Alya reminds her. “Fine. Fine! _Okay_. Christ. If we aren’t going to do anything fun, I might as well feed you.”

 

 

***

 

 

A few days later, as they step off the curb, Nino’s eyes go wide as he repeats, “You’re not running it.”

“Nope.”

“Good God,” he says, faint. “You didn’t actually step all over ethics, did you?”

“No,” Alya straight-out lies.

“Christ. You did. Oh my god.” Nino shakes his head. “Did you at least do what you promised?”

“First of all, I didn’t promise you shit.” Alya opens the door to the café and adds, “Second of all, I didn’t see him.”

“Even if you did, you wouldn’t have said anything.” He pauses. “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad it worked out for you. As long as you’re happy. You are happy, right?”

Alya stops. Thinks. A few days ago, she got to shove crumbling banana cake in Ladybug’s face and kiss her afterwards, smiling too hard for it to be anything more than simple pressure.

She’s figured out Ladybug isn’t perfect: she isn’t used to putting this level of trust into other people, and even though she tries her best to give it unhesitatingly to Alya, sometimes she fails.

Still, there’s no doubt in her head that it was worth more than an exposé, more than proving that she had more to offer the city than a couple of heroes. There will be other stories.

“Yes,” she tells him. “Yeah. I think I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to say hi to me on quensty.tunglr.hell!


End file.
